After the visit to Iga...

Early 2025

After the Wood Kiln Firing Workshop in Oxfordshire with Svend Bayer, Robin's dream of building an Anagama wood firing kiln started to become more vivid in his mind. (From his wife's point of view) Robin absolutely loved the whole experience of the workshop - the packing of the kiln, its look and shape, the intense heat & smell of burning wood... He told me he was captivated by both the physical labour and the magic of firing, and he met a bunch of pottery enthusiast with whom he felt he could share his passion freely. The results of the firing were much closer to what he always hoped to archive..., raw, earthy and beautiful. Back in Wales, he kept on talking about it - to me, and friends and visitors, again and again. It was clear something inside him had ignited.

My father was diagnosed with the early stages of dementia some years earlier, and as it was slowly but surely progressing, we decided all five of us would spend Christmas and New Year with my parents in Kyoto... something I am so profoundly glad that we did. The whole trip was full of activities with our three children (young adults), with my old parents, as well as my brother and his young family in Tokyo. Amidst all this Robin and I still managed to squeeze in a visit to Tanimoto-san in Iga, just before returning to Wales.

Iga was the place where Robin began his journey in Japan many years ago, and to walk those familiar hills again felt deeply significant. Being there once again made clear that wood firing is not just a technique, but a way of life. Standing in that landscape, the kiln shed with the anagama, surrounded by bamboo forests, and seeing the spectacular works of Kousei Tamimoto in the private gallery, the dream that had been flickering in him for a long long time seemed to burn more brightly. It was there, I think, that the idea of building the wood firing kiln stopped being just a dream, and started to become something he was truly determined to create.